Is That Your Own Idea?

Standing in the courtroom of Imperial Rome, the battered and badly mauled rabbi from Nazareth couldn't resist answering a question with a question. Governor Pilate's original inquiry, "Are you the king of the Jews?" is risky talk in an empire that tolerates no rival to Caesar. The discussion is a dangerous one and Jesus' answer potentially explosive. Depending on how it's retold and by whom, it might all be interpreted as a serious indictment that the governor himself is whispering treason. Delicate stuff.

• "I don't believe in organized religion."
• "I'm an agnostic."
• "Christianity is outdated.
• "I believe every word in the Bible is literally true."
• "If you aren't attached to the right religion, you can't go to heaven." 
• "To be involved with Jesus, drastic religious adjustments must come first."

Oddly enough, polar opposite responses like those can have a single motivation. Many attempts at self definition are based on what we reject. We often glance around to make sure we are dismissing things whose rejection will gain approval or make us appear to be a certain type of person - open-minded, tolerant, holy, devout, serious, smart, humble, not "one of those people". The pattern holds when we affirm things as well. In either case though, if the lines drawn in defining ourselves are copied off someone else's paper, they are no good.

"Is that your own idea?"

Jesus is supremely interested in what you think. Thinking - your own thinking, not copy-cat thinking - is very important to Him. He came in fact because our thinking on big issues is scrambled, tortured and twisted. Sin, failure, missing the mark, damages our minds and leaves us blinded about our own nature and God's. Unable to know what we don't know, we act from our own darkness,  creating strange and almost mythological notions about God. It leaves us with the unpaid baggage of "I'm not good" and "God is angry." The first causes us to hide ourselves from significant people around us and the other causes us to hide from God, who is always closer than we imagine.

Your ideas are important. Do you know what they are?